


Lucretia Week- Love/Sacrifice

by Beth_Penrose



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Found Family, during tsc, focus on lucretia, no relationships - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 15:39:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13814247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth_Penrose/pseuds/Beth_Penrose
Summary: I couldn't think of a creative name for the title, so it's just the prompt for today. Takes place during the Stolen Century, about Lucretia and the others becoming a family.





	Lucretia Week- Love/Sacrifice

A lot of people’s first love is another person. Lucretia’s first love was knowledge. Ever since she was young she fell in love with it, first in books she read and later in her own observations. While her peers were busy chasing each other with flowers and proclamations of affection, Lucretia was busy chasing them, writing everything they did in one of her many notebooks. It didn’t make her very popular. But as much as she may try, as much as she may observe, she could never understand that strange force that compelled them towards each other. For her love was a new discovery, or a night spent pouring over a favorite tome. Making yourself vulnerable to another person? How could that be love? So, Lucretia passed a lonely childhood and adolescence. When she an adult she was recruited by the IPRE, and her first thought was thank Gods. For five months she would only have five other people to deal with, and her days would be filled with writing and research. She wasn’t bargaining on how long five months would become, how much she would lose, and how much she would gain.   
The first few months on the Starblaster she kept to herself. Everyone assumed that she was just spending a lot of time mourning their lost world. The truth was she was terrified. Everyone she had ever known was gone, and, yes, that was tragic. But what struck her just as hard was that she was stuck for gods knew how long with six other people. They lived together. Before this was over they might even fight together or die together. What was supposed to be a dream had quickly turned into a nightmare and Lucretia didn’t know how to handle it. But at least the others were content to let her be. That is, until they landed on the first planet. Everyone else quickly dispersed, save for her and Magnus. They didn’t talk to each other much. At first Lucretia assumed that it was because he was so busy training. But one night about six months in there was a knock on her door. She answered it, to find a note sitting in the hallway. You need a break. Let’s go for a walk ~M. Part of Lucretia was apprehensive about leaving her quarters. What could she and Magnus even have to say to each other? He had seemed nice enough, but still… a small voice whispered in Lucretia’s brain, telling her she needed fresh air, that going for a walk with a friendly companion could be a good thing. She immediately recognized the voice as her mother’s taking the same nagging tone as it had ever since she was a kid. Except that her mother was dead. The reminder was almost enough to send her back to bed. But Lucretia knew that, even dead, her mother was right. It wasn’t good to keep herself in her room alone, doing nothing but scrawling out page after page of senseless thoughts. So, without much enthusiasm but briskly nonetheless, Lucretia put on some clean clothes (she’d been wearing the same boxer shorts, tank top, and silvery velvet robe ensemble for more days than she cared to admit) and splashed some cold water on her face before exiting her room. When she stepped off the Starblaster Magnus was already waiting, leaning casually against the hull.   
“Good, you got my note.”  
“Yes, thank you.”   
“No problem.” Magnus stood up straight and they began walking. The planet truly was beautiful, with wildlife and plants that Lucretia had never seen before. It was a testament to how deeply her depression must have run that she hadn’t taken the time to really look at any of it before now. As they continued in silence for several minutes, Magnus must have noticed her looking around because he said, “It’s really beautiful, isn’t it?”  
“Yeah, it is,” Lucretia replied. A part of her new that Magnus didn’t really care about the natural habitat, and that made the offer to go on the walk all the more meaningful. It was especially touching when he didn’t mind stopping several times for her to pull out her notebook and take down a quick sketch of whatever majestic tree or small creature they crossed paths with. After an hour or so they found themselves back at the ship. “Thanks again, for the invitation,” Lucretia offered before they boarded again. “It was just what I needed.”  
“Yeah, I figured.”   
After that Magnus began inviting her out for walks every couple of days. They didn’t talk much, neither of them really needed to. But being out in the sunlight again, being reminded that she was thinking and breathing and had a useful skill, was enough to make her start feeling alive again. When the year was up, and the animal planet was destroyed Lucretia mourned, the same as she had mourned her planet. But when they landed on their next planet and began again she didn’t waste time sulking in her room. Gods only knew how much time she had here, and this time she was going to make it count.   
As the years continued so did the path of destruction and death in their wake. Some of them handled it better than others. Taako kept up with his jokes, but at night the entire ship echoed with sobs that they all pretended not to hear. Davenport retreated into himself, only seeming to exist when it was time to fly the ship. Barry and Lup spent more time together, doing gods only knew what. But if sharing each other’s presence made them feel better… well there were worst ways to cope. Merle spent a lot of time praying. Magnus seemed to be the same most of the time, except that he was losing his temper more often, looking for something he could actually fight and taking any wrong look as a challenge. Lucretia thought maybe she appeared to be the least affected. She did the same things she always did: read a book, wrote down her observations, sketched and sketched and sketched. What the others didn’t know what that she wrote and drew in her notebooks weren’t always notes. Sometimes they were poems. And sometimes they were drawings of the Hunger. Or at least what she pictured it to be. Gaping mouths, angry faces contorted into horrific masks. She saw the faces at night when she prayed for sleep to come, and instead ended up turning on her bedside lamp and reaching once again for a piece of paper and pen. The year they went to the beach was the first one since the animal planet that Lucretia began to feel comfortable. She even put on a pair of shorts and a tank top and joined the others by the water. That had to be Lucretia’s favorite year. For once there was no evil, no Hunger, and no mission. She could just sit for once, feel the sun, and talk to the others without fear. At first, they thought it was strange that she knew so much about them. She had kept mostly to herself thus far, not really interacting. So how did she know what Merle’s favorite plants were, or the songs that Taako hummed to himself as he cooked? They listened in astonishment as she timidly explained that she’d been observing them all the whole time, and that just because she didn’t say much didn’t mean she was blind or deaf. Merle was the first person to reply after she explained.   
“Well, welcome to the party!” Lucretia smiled in response. That year was cookouts around a barbecue pit, splashing in the waves, and watching seagulls fly. When the hunger really did come, Lucretia was sad to see it go, of course, but she knew she was glad to have been there. Somehow, over the course of the year, she had found a new love. She had found her family.   
As the years continued the bonds continued to grow. Not every planet was a trip to the beach, of course. There were hard times, times where they wanted to scream at each other out of frustration and times where they actually did. But that’s what families did, they fought. And at the end of the cycle, when their bodies were returned with the same scrapes and bruises from that barfight eons ago, they always made up.   
That made what Lucretia had to do all the harder. A part of her almost wished that her relationships with the others had stayed the same as they were at the beginning of the journey. That would make it a lot easier, erasing their memories. She had been used to being alone, then, had actually preferred it. Now, even though she was the one doing the taking and knew she didn’t have a right to self-pity, she couldn’t help but feel like she was making a sacrifice herself. How many times would she have to lose a family? And could she ever find this one again?


End file.
